title: Lithium pellet production (LiPP): a device for the production of small spheres of lithium.
abstract: With lithium as a fusion material gaining popularity, a method for producing lithium pellets relatively quickly has been developed for NSTX. The Lithium Pellet Production device is based on an injector with a sub-millimeter diameter orifice and relies on a jet of liquid lithium breaking apart into small spheres via the Plateau-Rayleigh instability. A prototype device is presented in this paper and for a pressure difference of ΔP = 5 Torr, spheres with diameters between 0.91 < D < 1.37 mm have been produced with an average diameter of D = 1.14 mm, which agrees with the developed theory. Successive tests performed at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory with Wood's metal have confirmed the dependence of sphere diameter on pressure difference as predicted.
authors.affiliation: Center for Plasma Material Interactions, Department of Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA. fiflis1@illinois.edu
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Fiflis
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Andrucyzk
authors.forename: A L
authors.initials: AL
authors.lastname: Roquemore
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: McGuire
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Curreli
authors.forename: D N
authors.initials: DN
authors.lastname: Ruzic